Progress requires some patience

No one seems happy with the economic development activity in the region.

What with a still stubbornly high unemployment rate of about 9.3 percent in St. Joseph County in June, officials are wringing their hands trying to find solutions.

Over the past few years, we've invested millions of dollars in the development of infrastructure -- roads, tech parks, high-speed Internet and more -- and we've worked on the development of a culture of entrepreneurship.

Innovation Park at Notre Dame opened in 2009 and is now about 85 percent full of budding entrepreneurs; half a dozen young businesses already have left the nest. Construction is under way on the first of what hopefully will be a boatload of tenants at South Bend's Ignition Park.

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In the meantime, the University of Notre Dame has been busy looking for opportunities to license and develop ideas that its faculty and staff have been working on.

All of this might sound like pie-in-the-sky dreaming to the naysayers of South Bend and surrounding areas, but some of those ideas that were born years ago have grown to become major employers in our area.

Let's recall that Press Ganey, the South Bend company that helps health care organizations measure patient experience, was founded here some 27 years ago by a couple of Notre Dame academics and has now become an employer of about 600 local people.

The area's infrastructure and culture have been getting a lot of attention. But ideas need some time to hatch and grow. Hopefully, some of those budding entrepreneurs will choose to remain in Michiana.

Not so long ago, there was talk of streamlining economic development efforts in the area, especially in St. Joseph County. There was concern that we were seen by outsiders as a confused group of people who couldn't get along.

As a result, lots of different economic development efforts worked independently, sapping resources from each other.

But we already have many of the resources in place; we just need a little patience.

Witness the four St. Joseph County companies that were recently named to Indiana's fifth annual "Companies to Watch" list.

Congratulations to the following: South Bend-based Anthony Travel, which has built a growing business based on collegiate athletic travel services; FDC Graphic Films, a South Bend supplier of various films to the graphics and sign industries; PullRite, a Mishawaka manufacturer of hitches for the RV industry; and Treadstone LLC, a South Bend manufacturer of rubber mulch.

That doesn't even include Agdia, a scientific and technical consulting firm in Elkhart, or BriMar Wood Innovations in Goshen.

Those companies and others on the list of 25 award winners were chosen from among 165 nominations and will be honored at an Aug. 23 ceremony in Indianapolis. Interestingly, the award is an initiative of Cassopolis-based Edward Lowe Foundation, which was founded by the local inventor of Kitty Litter.

And The Tribune will do its part to honor our area award winners by doing a story on each in the coming months. By doing so, we hope to generate some pride for the many efforts that are under way to develop and cultivate new ideas.